North Of The Border,wildlife Is Fair Game

OTTAWA — In the United States, the gray wolf is a protected species, guarded by tough federal legislation.

In Canada, the creature is vermin. Hunters are free to blast away at the beasts on a whim, and they do.

A few years ago, U.S. game biologists using radio collars to track gray wolves in Montana were horrified when a trio of females loped across the line to establish dens in Alberta. Each found a mate, gave birth to cubs and settled in. Within 16 months, all of the female wolves, their offspring and their mates had been killed by Canadian ranchers.

Such contradictions are commonplace along the border.

Among international wildlife groups, Canada is notorious for its failure to pass a federal endangered species law similar to one enacted in the United States more than a quarter-century ago. Mexico has broad federal protections for threatened species, leaving Canada as North America's wildlife renegade.

Feeling the pressure, both domestically and from abroad, the country's new environmental minister, David Anderson, pledged last month to push for strong legislation that will place special emphasis on guarding breeding and ranging habitat, such as forest, wetlands, prairies and coastal waters.

Canada has been down this road before. Although Anderson is personally respected by environmentalists, there is cynicism as to whether a federal government that has shown a historic unwillingness to confront the issue can buck opposition from the country's extremely powerful forestry, mining and agricultural industries -- as well as from provincial legislatures.

"We simply cannot get our act together in this country on the most fundamental of problems," said David Schindler, a renowned wildlife biologist and professor of ecology at the University of Alberta. "Far be it from Canada to stop loggers or miners or farmers from the innocent pursuit of destroying our natural heritage."

In a country so vast and pristine that many of its citizens have difficulty comprehending that hundreds of native animal and plant species are in genuine danger, Canadian environmentalists find themselves fighting battles that their American counterparts won a generation ago.

"Richard Nixon brought in a darned good law in the U.S., and Pierre Trudeau refused," said Elizabeth May, executive director of the Canadian branch of the Sierra Club, referring to the former Canadian prime minister. "That's been the story ever since. Mexico can do it, Australia can do it, but good, green Canada can't."

Earlier this year, more than 600 scientists from Canadian universities, research centers and even the government's own wildlife agencies signed a strongly worded letter to Prime Minister Jean Chrtien imploring federal Parliament to enact meaningful endangered species legislation.

"Canada's endangered species are too imperiled, too close to extinction, and too precious to be held hostage to lobbyists, political manipulation or simple ignorance," the letter stated.

In cases like the gray wolf, opponents of a federal species law argue that the animal may be endangered in the United States, but healthy populations survive in Canada and do not deserve rigorous protection.

The grizzly bear, abundant in Alberta and British Columbia only a decade ago, is now in decline, according to many wildlife experts. "The grizzly is going down rapidly in Alberta," Schindler said. "Mainly because of huge intrusion into habitat by logging, oil and gas companies."

Even wolves are having problems. In the Bow Valley of Banff National Park, one of the most famous symbols of Canada's raw beauty, not a single litter of wolves survived this year; all of the young creatures were killed by cars or met other misfortunes from humans.

Canada has 339 species in serious danger of disappearing, according to wildlife experts, from the Peary caribou to the piping plover. The federal government lists these animals and plants as endangered but has no broad laws to protect them.

Some of the creatures, such as the northern cricket frog or the Eskimo curlew -- an Arctic bird -- haven't been seen in years.

Others, from the Vancouver Island marmot on Canada's far west coast to the American marten in Newfoundland, on the country's easternmost edge, are down to a few hundred animals.

At least on paper, there are often local regulations or provincial laws to guard Canada's threatened animals or plants against hunters or trappers, or against harvesters and collectors.

Critics say such laws are often toothless, and the real danger to Canadian wildlife is not the hunter's bullet but the developer's bulldozer, the logger's chain saw, and the farmer's pesticides and plow.

"The real issue is habitat, not the individual animal," said Lindsay Rodger, species recovery manager for World Wildlife Fund-Canada. "If we can't protect the spaces where endangered animals live and breed, we can't protect the animal."